From Exegesis to Exposition (text only) by R. B. Jr. Chisholm

by Robert B. Chisholm Jr.

From Exegesis to A Practical Guide to Using Biblical Hebrew [Paperback] Robert B. Jr. Chisholm (Author)

Genres: Theology, Reference, Language, Old Testament

Paperback

First published May 1, 1999

About the author

While Dr. Chisholm enjoys teaching the full breadth of Old Testament Studies, he takes special delight in the major and minor prophets. He can take the intricacies of those books and communicate them for marketplace use, as evidenced in his published texts on the prophetic literature. Dr. Chisholm recently published Handbook on the Prophets. He was the translation consultant for the International Children’s Bible and for The Everyday Bible, and is senior Old Testament editor for the NET Bible.

Reviews

[Finn Erickson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read for Hebrew class. A somewhat decent read, I’m motivated to keep learning Hebrew so I can better understand and preach the Bible.

His grasp of OT narrative was GREAT. He showed the way Heb stories develop and have plot twists and cross references and foreshadowing, it was great. But didn’t really have anything on typology/Jesus which was immensely disappointing. Other genres, he didn’t focus as much on and his insights on poetry and prophecy were not very helpful.

He looses a star for this foolish blunder: “The Book of Psalms is a collection of prayers and hymns; it exhibits no overarching design that might impact one’s interpretation of any individual psalm.” (Pg 184). With all due respect, THIS IS STUPID!!! The Psalms are clearly organized to tell the story of Jesus, the blessed man and messiah of God. And Chisholm BLEW IT! If you want anything good on Psalms, read Hamilton or Ash, this guy’s useless. I know this is a grammar/Bible study/homiletics book, not a bib Theo book, but COME ON!! My tension with this book is that he says great things, but then will say something stupid like this. A Bible professor should know better and not lead innocent(?) schoolboys like me astray with this nonsense!

He loses another star for this absurd statement abt the OT: He says we need to “make the ancient texts come alive, so that it can impact the thinking of people… here and now…. These ancient texts [that is, the OT] are not addressed to Christians, nor do they pertain directly to the New Testament church” (221). WRONG! The OT was written directly to Christians (which includes the church in the OT and the church in the NT). See Rom 15:4 and 1 Cor 20:11. Also, we don’t need to make the text come alive, the Word of God is living and active (Heb 4:12).

At the end of the book when he gives sermon examples, the fruit of the hard study and exegesis, it was sadly disappointing. His sermons were Christless and cheesy, a waste of hard exegesis work. The gospel was missing from his sermons and Christ was not magnified. They would be amen-ed in a synagogue. FAIL!

If anything, I want to learn Hebrew more so that I don’t preach like him.

[Rick Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good and helpful on the Hebrew, so-so on literary analysis, and dreadful in his treatment of OT characters in his examples in the penultimate chapter.

[Chris Little · Rating 3 out of 5]

I recommend this book, but I also consider it has serious shortcomings. The title, though not exciting, is clear about its purpose. Chisholm writes to help people use Hebrew in the move From Exegesis to Exposition.

Where it's strong is the exegesis - using Hebrew.

Where it's weak is the exposition - writing sermons.

First, the strength. I have a little knowledge of Hebrew, and benefit from the Bible software that aids interaction with the original languages. The great usefulness of From Exegesis to Exposition is building on that basic knowledge. It's not an introductory text, not the book to use to start learning Hebrew.

If you have some biblical Hebrew, you might be tempted into this book by reading some of the chapter sub-headings: how words work and play, basics of Hebrew syntax, the basic structure of Hebrew narrative and poetry. These are matters I would like to know better - and Chisholm helps me. Along the way, he is always providing examples from the text. These show him as an attentive reader who is careful to let the text itself shape his understanding.

Such care in reading is also exhibited in the eight sermon texts he provides. So, while I have concerns about the sermons, Chisholm's love for the Hebrew Bible is very clear all the way through his book.

So to the weakness: exposition. From Exegesis to Exposition is less useful from Chapter 8, 'Putting It All Together.' He starts with a series of seven steps. (From 'Step 1: Viewing the Forest' to 'Step 7: Viewing the Forest Again.') Unusually for a book published in the US, these steps are not as well formatted as they could be. But that's a relatively minor matter.

The most serious issue with the process is the end product - the eight example expositions - are all rather pale and tend towards behaviour improvement. They are not legalism, but their feel is definitely that of spiritual-moral improvement.

The underlying cause is a lack of whole Bible integration. Or, simply, there's not enough Gospel of Jesus. The Old Testament passages are read as if answering the question, 'What does this tell me about being a Christian?' It's the wrong question! Better is, 'What does this tell me about Christ?'

Jesus taught that all the scriptures point to him and his ministry (see John 5:39-40, Luke 24:44-47, 2 Corinthians 1:20). Therefore Old Testament exposition, to be a true exposition, must also point to Jesus and his ministry. The Old Testament is for Christians indirectly, because we are in Christ, rather than directly (with the notable exception of Jewish followers of Jesus, of course).

This work needs to be strengthened with a more gospel-centred approach to the pre-Christmas scriptures. Perhaps by reading the work of Graeme Goldsworthy, or something similar.

My final recommendation: read From Exegesis to Exposition to learn how to use Hebrew better, read something else to gain skills in turning that Hebrew understanding into Christian teaching.

[abbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The technical work in this book is extremely valuable and helpful but Chisholm completely lost me with his practical examples of exposition using contemporary contextualization. His work relied heavily on unchristian sources and was a horrible representation of the minister’s work to present scripture to the church.

[Michael Pagan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good practical advice, especially in chapter 9 regarding moving from exegesis to theological principles to specific application. This is an area where I am weak, and the book has been helpful.

The main shortcoming I see is an underlying insistence on not reading the OT as a Christian, an unfortunate byproduct of his dispensationalism I would assume.

This results in sermons where sound practical advice (that’s faithful to the passage!) is given, but Christ isn’t preached with any regularity or focus, making his sermons not particularly... well, not particularly Christian.

[Stephen Drew · Rating 3 out of 5]

There’s some helpful things here, but overall this book simply tries to do too much and is not very clear. The majority of the book is simply examples of applying his exegetical method, which he clearly believes is the best way to teach exegesis. However, I think for the average reader the examples instead are simply dry and hard to track with after one or two. It seems it would have been a better approach to write in detail about method and then give one or two good examples at the end instead over over illustrated throughout.

At the beginning Chislom states that this book is meant to be core anyone, but really one much have a very good handle of Hebrew to follow. He does not even begin to touch on exposition until late in the book and again, tries to do too much by including a kind of basic Hebrew Grammar at the beginning. I simply did not find this to be a clear, compelling, or well written book. I greatly prefer Michael Goreman’s book Elements of Biblical Exegesis that offers a very and systematic and clear method.

[Sean McGowan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very helpful.

[Michael Schmid · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book outlining the process of moving from exegesis of Hebrew OT texts to exposition, with a great overview of the basics and principles of Hebrew grammar.

[Barry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I finished this book after a break of about a month since I had last read from it. As I picked it up and leafed through to my bookmark, I couldn't remember a thing about this book. That's not a good sign. As I read the final chapter some of the book came back to me, but not enough to be helpful. My conclusion? This book is not memorable. While reading it it seemed helpful and interesting, despite it being dry and a bit boring. Dr. Chisholm knows Hebrew well and is an expert at picking it apart to find the nuggets of gold contained in the Hebrew texts. However, his 'basic steps' for crafting a sermon from this careful study seems overly laborious and exceedingly time-consuming. I can see spending this amount of time doing careful research for an academic paper you are wanting to publish, but for the average pastor I cannot see them spending this amount of time to research as Dr. Chisholm suggests. Following his plan would yield amazing sermons (from a Hebrew point of view), but it seems impractical on a weekly basis.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was okay. There was some helpful stuff. Honestly, though, if you want to learn a language, I think it's great to use textbooks that don't assume something supernatural about the main text in that language... Though in fairness, this was a textbook that had preachers in mind.